The loud, apt epithet, applying sure; <br />The dim-drawn image, artfully obscure; <br />The perfect stanza, framed of words as choice <br />And round as pearls, yet liquid to the voice; <br />A pith of phrase, and musical array <br />Of numbers;—these are the prime charms of Gray. <br /> <br />The naked majesty and open wonder <br />Of true sublimity heaped in lines of thunder; <br />That artless grace wherewith the olden time <br />Dandled the happy infancy of Rhyme; <br />That negligent melody which shames the trick <br />Of wire-drawn verse, and verse-drawn rhetoric: <br />These in our rich old Bards abound; but these <br />To Gray were literary heresies.<br /><br />Charles Harpur<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/gray-21/
